"You Poor Thing" Ghostface Thirst Trap

About

"You Poor Thing" Ghostface Thirst Trap or Ghostface Pareidolia refers to a viral TikTok video of a man in a Ghostface mask from the horror film Scream thirst trapping under the on-screen text "you poor thing." The video inspired TikTokers to make ironic videos mimicking the style of the original using a poor imitation of the mask, as well as a pareidolia trend similar to the Things That Look Like Among Us Crewmates meme where users film things that look like the Ghostface mask over on-screen text reading "you poor thing."

Origin

On August 30th, 2021, TikToker^[1] @nessie.ttk posted a thirst trap video standing against a red background wearing the mask of the Ghostface killer from the Scream franchise (shown below). In the video, he adjusts his mask with a bare hand under on-screen text reading "you poor thing." The video caption reads, "you like being humiliated though, don’t you?" It gained over 4.2 million views in a week.

Spread

Over the following days, TikTokers posted videos mimicking and mocking the original to the same sound, using bad Ghostface masks or things that vaguely resemble the mask instead of a real mask. The on-screen text "you poor thing" is also included. For example, on September 2nd, 2021, TikToker^[3] @matiasscassinova posted a video using a paper mask, gaining over 400,000 views in five days (shown below, left). On September 3rd, TikToker^[4] @slasherface posted a similar video to this, gaining over 650,000 views in four days (shown below, right).

Ghostface Pareidolia

The trend quickly inspired a spinoff trend where TikTokers show off objects that look like the Ghostface mask, usually including the text "you poor thing" over top. On September 6th, TikToker^[5] @lawalsucks posted a video of their bowl of cereal, slightly resembling the shape of the mask, gaining over 804,000 views in a day (shown below).

On the same day, TikToker^[6] @hecallsmedeku posted a video photoshopping a Smiling Mask from High-Rise Invasion to look like the mask, gaining over 1.1 million views in a day (shown below, left). On the same day, TikToker^[7] @localdespair posted a video drawing a mouth onto a piano key, creating the face using the black keys, gaining over 350,000 views in 20 hours (shown below, right).

On September 6th, TikToker^[2] @et.sk8 posted a video comparing the mask to a number of objects with text reading, "I can't see the same anymore," gaining over 668,000 views in a day (shown below).

On September 7th, Twitter^[8] user @yatocheeks posted a video showing the face in Draken's body from the anime Tokyo Revengers (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References